What they want to do and what will happen in the near future are two very different things. That said, if it where to happen this would be huge.

mmm...I think Yahoo is coming a little late to this party...Though I guess there are a lot of people who still use Yahoo for email...and Facebook's messaging center sure has a long way to go.

Gaming will continue to work its way into everyday life. Several trends will really bring this together. 1. Casual Gaming - These games lack the major time commitment of many current video games. It is a relaxing and yet not life draining alternative to games in the past. You can expect busy professionals to pick these up. 2. Wii (Interactive) - The ability to interact with games will increase with time and we will see a growing combination of exercise and learning integrated into the gaming experience. 3. Community - In the past gaming was oftentimes thought of as an isolating experience. But with the presence of MMORPG's and even more the ability to network and play head-to-head against friends and family, the isolation aspect of gaming will drop away. Thats not to say that gaming will not remain a somewhat two-edged venue. Most forms of great recreation are - easily used or abused.

I love UC/VoIP. One feature that is especially attractive to me is the ability to have voicemails sent as email attachments. Love it!

Memory could be playing me short, but if I remember correctly IBM is at least in the SMB market just reselling NetApp? So the losses are no big surprise. That said, both EMC and NetApp are on the higher end when it comes to price, though perhaps average amongst the major competitors. Expect to see smaller companies begin to chew up a larger share as SMB's look for less expensive alternatives with the budget crunch. For example, the NexSAN for archival storage.

I'm thinking this upcoming year if they keep on track, though the economy may cause them to reconsider their outlay (that said, thus far they are holding course). I'd love to see this reach small outlying towns that are still stuck on dialup.

The price drop is certainly taking a lot of pressure off...and I am sure that alternative energy will take a backseat to the ailing economy (though Obama will probably utilize investing in alternative energy as a method of jumpstarting the economy). That said, hopefully at least this project will go through...I run World Community Grid on all my computers and have for some years now. Love watching the machine crack away at world hunger, aids, cancer, etc.

Lively was horrible. The ninth graders should use one of the many better virtual world environments - e.g. Second Life or Entropia.

MS always has to change the UI around with every new version. Then everyone has to learn a new UI. It's sort of like the way the auto makers change the chrome and styling every year, and look at the shape they are in. Here's what MS should do with 7: 1) Make it secure 2) Make it fast 3) Make the software work with old hardware 4) Make one type (no more home ver, pro ver, ultimate ver crap). 5) Make it cheap - $90 On the other hand, I like Linux better anyway, so if MS brings out another Vista, it will help move more people towards Linux.

Interesting, but when are they going to expand?

Interesting, but since gas has dropped below $2.00 a gallon, research into alternative energy will probably go away until the next fuel crisis :(

I'm glad to see that Obama is going promote broadband. The United States has been behind in this area for too long.

You couldn’t buy this much ego in the White House, even with payday loans. It will be a unique cabinet, that’s for sure. President Elect Barack Obama’s cabinet picks have been announced, and critics are wondering just how he’s going to manage such strong personalities. “I’m a believer in strong personalities and strong opinions” he says, and he’s going to get it in spades. National security and economic policy teams will be led by veterans, each used to being the top dog. His national security team will consist of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Vice President Joe Biden, and Marine General (four star, retired) Jim Jones as National Security Advisor, and four star General David Petraeus as chief of U.S. Central Command. His economic team? National Economic Council head Larry Summers, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, and former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker as the lead of the economic recovery board. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has been termed as “hard charging”, adding more to the mix that could prove volatile if Obama’s unable to manage them with a cool head and firm hand. Like a payday loan, it takes a bite from a budget battle, and Obama is poised to get a lot of wisdom from this group. He may look to build on the Democratic Party’s recent gains, but to do so he has to stand toe to toe with a room full of giants.

Linux has two application which allow bidirectional file syncing. NYK (DUI)

Vyatta, an open source router/firewall/vpn software company has released a white paper claiming their solutions. ====================================== Brian Social Bookmarking Campaigns

I do not think calling it a Walkman will increase sales for this phone. Walkman conjures to mind bulky and outdated, at least to me.

Generally I find all of the major search engines to have the same results - poor. Thus why I have always advocated the crowdsourced search engine. Metasearch brings together bad results from all the engines, this isn't really a superior move. The single exception would be Scour which adds crowdsourcing to metasearch, but their UI still has some issues that keep me from using it on a regular basis and Google's addition of SearchWiki is huge in my opinion.

AMD better hope they can, right now they are dying with the economy and competition from Intel.

V. agree with you there Margaret. The stress factor is reduced in a big way working from home. Love the feeling of not having to be in the transit rat race.

Another significant factor for consideration is the move by companies to use virtualization to reduce the number of physical servers one purchases. Whereas in the past one might have deployed an individual server for mail, ftp, web server, monitoring, etc. now several of these can be placed on a single slightly higher powered unit (and preferrably a secondary one for redundancy sake).

I've been telecommuting for over 3 years and its the best. I am very grateful to be able to do it. Not only is it good for the environment, but its good for mental wellbeing too, in my opinion...much less stress, and a great savings in time spent commuting, as well as the expense of it.

Umm...And why is IBM making Lotus again? Because we don't have OpenOffice?

Perhaps this will be one good result of the current recession....the faster adaptation of web-based cash flow management tools. Mint is awesome...though still lacks support for some important banks.

Very impressive, kudos to Opera for a job well done.

I've always avoided GoDaddy. Their reputation has never been stellar and I've found their edgy advertising tasteless. Maybe its what little hobby shops want, but when it comes to professional organizations it feels too amateur.